Victor Philippe Philipsen (1841-1907), View of Vesuvius from the Bay of Naples, Signed Oil on Wood Panel, Framed

This oil on wood panel depicts a panoramic view of Mount Vesuvius seen across the Bay of Naples. The water fills the centre of the composition in broad passages of turquoise and pale blue, with the volcano rising at the far side under a thin plume of smoke and the city spreading in a white line along the shore to the left. A rocky foreground with a ruined arch anchors the near side, and fishing boats work the shallows just beyond it, small figures bent over their nets. Sailing vessels are scattered across the bay toward the horizon, reduced to white marks in the haze. The sky is painted in soft gradations of blue and cloud, with the whole scene held in the flat, luminous light of the middle of the day.

Victor Philippe Philipsen (1841-1907) was a French painter of landscape and marine subjects, working in the Realist tradition in the second half of the nineteenth century, and his travels brought him to Naples. The Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius were among the most painted subjects in nineteenth century European art, sought out by artists on the Grand Tour for the meeting of sea, sky and volcanic landscape that no other site offered. The painting is signed in the bottom right, "V.Philipsen", and is presented in a moulded gilt frame.